


The Doctor and the Messenger Pigeon

by smartlions



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Awkward Flirting, Bonding, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Most characters are minor oops, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, World War I, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-03-22 19:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13771320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartlions/pseuds/smartlions
Summary: Angela wasn't supposed to be a doctor. She wasn't supposed to rescue a crashed pilot, she wasn't supposed to find out that they were a woman, and she certainly wasn't supposed to fall in love.





	1. Chapter 1

To put it plainly, Angela was having a shit day. It was only just past noon and she had already had three patients die on the table, the worst of which was a middle-aged infantryman who had almost been torn in half by shrapnel. At that point, any efforts she had put into stitching him back together were completely futile, and honestly, a waste of supplies, but she still went through the motions. Thinking about it, she sighed bitterly, still scrubbing the man’s blood from her hands with a sponge in a bowl of water, now both dyed crimson. The skin of her hands were pink and raw, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t get the blood from beneath her nails. She eventually gave up, tossing the sponge to the floor. It was useless now, stained beyond repair. She’d have to find a new one.

Doing her job didn’t bother her, but the waste of supplies did. The Great War was dragging on into its third year, and envoys were fewer and farther between. They had to make due, and in the last week, had started taking matters into their own hands, stripping bedclothes into bandages. It was frustrating, but was what was expected of her and the nurses who served under her shaky leadership.

Technically, she wasn’t a surgeon, so by all accounts she was in over her head. But the actual doctor had been blown up last week in a shelling, caught while he had made his rounds on the frontlines, and Angela had seniority on the other nurses, having been travelling between camps since the call to arms in 1914, as well as only barely being older than the other girls. So, she’d been promoted unceremoniously to “doctor.” That suited her just fine usually—doctor Zeigler got called a Kraut a lot less than Sister Zeigler. Even if she insisted that she was Swiss, not German. With today already off to a rocky start, she would gladly have had the pressure taken off her shoulders by anyone else.

There was a marked change in her attitude, though; a year ago, the loss of three soldiers in a row would have destroyed her, rendered her an inconsolable mess for the rest of the day. Now, the losses still weighed heavy on her heart, but mostly she needed a coffee before the next soldier was brought in.

The walk to the canteen wasn’t more than five minutes from Angela's surgery tent, but required passing the infirmary tent. The canvas entrance was pinned open to let in the fresh afternoon air; it was quiet and grey today, which was both a blessing and a curse. There was no percussion of shells pelting the trenches and no-man’s land in the distance, though that could start up at the drop of a hat. The worst was the pealing of the gas bells, which would send the whole camp into a flurry as everyone rushed to put their masks in place—less than half a kilometre from the front lines, they only had slightly longer to prepare than the men on the front. The grey clouds overhead meant rain, which meant that the humidity would finally break, but it also meant that the men on the frontlines were going to start coming down with colds and flus, then more cases of gangrene and infection in a week’s time.  Which meant more work for the nurses, who were already running on not enough sleep and not enough supplies. The rain came frequently in this part of France, and the ground was never quite solid, especially with all the foot traffic and passing vehicles that came through the camp.

The infirmary tent being opened also meant that the sounds of the men within escaped into the open air. The haunting moans of the dying and the complaints of those bunked next to them, the begging for food and drink, the flirting with the nurses, and the nurses’ own hushed reassurances, rebuffs, and chatter—too noisy. Angela didn’t miss it—another good thing about her impromptu promotion—only occasionally did she have to check in on the patients in the infirmary, and even then it wasn’t usually worth the trouble. The soldiers didn’t respect her any more than a regular nurse, not helped by her wearing the same grey dress and white apron, as well as happening to be a woman. She quickly moved past before any of the attending nurses could see her and call her over.

The canteen tent was, as usual, looking a little weather-worn. There were dried splatters of mud along the bottom of the canvas panels, from the tires of ambulances and supply trucks that would drive past toward the medical camp and officers’ bunkers. There were a few vehicles parked outside at the moment, though Angela didn’t see anyone about, or hear anything going on inside. The canvas covered extra benches and tables for the staff of the camp, and was attached to a small building that previously had been a storage space for the farmland that the trenches now hatched. The farmhouse was a little to the south, uphill; the owners had long since left.

Angela beelined to the serving station to the back of the building, and silently cheered when she saw that there were three packets of instant coffee still left. She ignored the omen that there would be no coffee tomorrow—the only reason they had had any for the last two weeks was that one of the telegraph operators found it in a supply crate, mixed in with their boxes of paper. She considered, for the space of a heartbeat, tucking one of the other packets into the pocket of her apron and making off with it, but didn’t want to deprive someone else. Or, more importantly, get caught stealing.

She reached out to the kettle and found that it was still warm to the touch (lukewarm, at least—it would have to do). She quickly assembled her mug of coffee, finding the least-dirty tin cup, and held the coffee close to her breast, preparing herself for the return to her tent. Only then she noticed that the canteen was not empty as she had originally thought.

Sitting in the corner by the front door, back to the wall, was another one of the nurses, watching her closely, hands nervously playing with a small white box of cigarettes, a lit one clamped between tightly closed lips. It was sister Lacroix, one of the French nurses that had been sent up to help a few months ago; Angela nodded politely, but the woman continued to stare. The woman’s gaze was as unflinching and intense as a feral cat’s, but Angela tried not to let it bother her—Lacroix had received word from the south of France that her husband had been killed in action, leaving the woman more like a ghost than a person. Finally glancing away, Lacroix’s voice cut through the space between the two women just as sharply as her amber eyes.

“Your habit is crooked, doctor.”

“Oh,” Angela cautiously reached up, readjusting the hem of her headdress, tucking some errant hairs back underneath. She still hadn’t determined if it was Lacroix’s accent or the woman’s personality that made everything she said sound like criticism, but that was another thing she tried not to hold against her. Angela had tried to speak to her in French, but the woman never deigned to respond; she rarely spoke to anyone, even before she received the news of her husband. “Thank you.”

Lacroix did not acknowledge her further until she was almost out the door, Angela trying not to flinch. “Doctor Ziegler.”

“Yes, sister Lacroix?”

“Would you like to sit?”

Though it was phrased as a simple question, Lacroix’s eyes made it seem like more of a demand. Angela set her coffee on the table, and folded her skirt nicely over her knees as she sat. Lacroix did not make any attempt to start a conversation, still drumming her cigarette carton against the table, so Angela sipped at her coffee.

“Where did you find a whole carton of cigarettes?” Angela immediately regretted the question, wishing she could swallow the words back down. Cigarettes made for great bargaining chips with the soldiers, but the supplies had stopped coming in mid-last week. Angela had a feeling that someone was hoarding their share, and was trying to find out who as a personal project for the last few days, but Lacroix was the worst person to ask after; not only was she newly widowed, but she was also a well-known heavy smoker.

Lacroix regarded her neutrally, lifting the carton. “Would you like one?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Angela took another quick sip of her coffee. “I was just curious.”

“Sister Oxton gave me hers from the last shipment when she heard the news,” Lacroix returned to drumming the box on the tabletop. “She claimed she didn’t want them.”

“Ah,” Angela said, trying to wrangle the small victory, knowing now that Oxton, one of the youngest nurses had been weaseling supplies away. She would have to pursue that later, though.

After another minute of uncomfortable silence, Lacroix spoke again. “Doctor Ziegler, how old are you?”

Angela looked down into the mug of barely-warm coffee, peering at her reflection carefully. How old did she look, she wondered? She felt like she’d lived a hundred miserable lives in the last year alone. The face looking back at her in the black liquid looked the same as when she arrived from London, save from the bruise-like bags under her eyes, and a splatter of blood across her chin. “Twenty-four this September.”

Lacroix hummed thoughtfully. “And you’re not married?”

She shook her head no, suddenly worried this would turn into one of her correspondences with her mother. Lacroix was only slightly older than her; the criticism seemed unfair. She also couldn’t help but worry that the thread of conversation would lead to Lacroix breaking down in tears, and Angela having to awkwardly deal with that. For people missing limbs who she had stitched closed, she had fantastic bedside manner. Broken spirits were not so easy for her to deal with, especially not lately—she was far too tired.

“Good.” Lacroix snapped the word, and Angela frowned. Fortunately, she elaborated, “don’t. Too much heartache. You’re sensible, doctor. Don’t give your life to some man, just to have him die on you.”

Angela scoffed before she could stop herself. “I think my mother would have a fit.”

“Is your father still alive?”

“No, he died when I was twelve.”

“Then your mother should know better.” Lacroix stubbed her cigarette out on the table. “There is no joy in marriage that blots out the pain of its end.”

Without another word, Lacroix stood and left the canteen, with the air of an actress exiting stage left.

Angela finished her now-cold coffee, and sighed. She wondered if she would ever not be tired again.

\--- 

“I swear on the King’s head, Ziegler, I haven’t be hoarding supplies!”

Angela hushed Oxton harshly. “Don’t say things like that. You’ll be arrested for treason.”

Angela had called for Oxton to join her in cutting linen bandages, hoping to corner her into admitting to withholding supplies. It was a sunny day, a nice change after the thunderstorm the camp had suffered the night before, and Angela couldn’t help but enjoy the change in climate. The two girls were set up behind the canteen, and with no one else around, had both decided to kick off their boots and stretch their legs out. Oxton had rolled her stockings off too, ignoring Angela’s warning that she wouldn’t defend the younger girl if an officer saw. Angela genuinely liked Oxton, feeling some sort of sisterly affection for her—despite everything she’d endured in the last year, the girl managed to keep good spirits, and never complained when asked to do the tedious chores and the late shifts. Furthermore, she had always been friendly to Angela, and never once asked her whether she was German or not. Angela’s plan had been to bully a confession out of her, but so far the attempt had been an abject failure.

“By who?” The younger girl waggled her eyebrows mischievously, and Angela swatted at her. “Are you going to tell on me?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not!” Oxton used her scissors to draw a cross over her heart. “I swear on the end of the war.”

“Don’t swear on that, either.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll jinx it, because you’re a liar.”

Oxton snorted, ignoring Angela’s accusation. “There’s no such thing as a jinx.”

Angela huffed in frustration. “Can you just admit to keeping supplies?”

Oxton shook her head resolutely. “My parents taught me not to lie.”

Angela started to reply, but was drowned out by the sound of a thundering explosion in the distance. Both girls jumped, dropping the linen strips from their laps. Quickly, Angela shoved her boots back on, and Oxton followed suit, shoving her discarded socks into the pocket of her apron.

“That was a lot closer than usual,” Oxton squeaked.

“We need to go, then,” Angela said firmly, and the two quickly gathered their things, running back to the medical tents. Arriving there, they found a gaggle of the other nurses gathered, nervously whispering, and a little further away, the few French nurses were also grouped together, looking around the camp warily. Seeing Angela approach, they all straightened, but immediately started to assail her with questions.

“Doctor, what’s happening?”

“Are they shelling the camp?”

The other girls started to whisper conspiracies, voicing their fears of attack. Angela wished that she could simply join them; she was terrified as well. Once before, in the previous camp she had been in, there had been an attack on the support encampment, and ever since she was terrified it would happen again. But there had only been the one explosion.

Angela handed her bundle of linens over to Oxton. “Of course not—” she hoped she sounded convincing, “—if they were shelling the camp, we’d all be dead already.”

“It sounded so close though!”

“What do we do?”

“You need to all go back to your posts. If there is anything else that we need to do, Commander Morrison will tell us,” Angela said sternly, crossing her hands behind her back to hide their shaking. “If there is an attack, we need to be ready to evacuate the soldiers.”

The girls still stared at her with fear in their eyes, but finally, someone stepped forward—Lacroix, with a strength in her voice Angela was sure she could never have managed. “Did you not hear the doctor? Go.”

The girls all scurried off, except Oxton, who looked up at Angela with doe eyes. “What do you want me to do, doctor?”

“Leave the linens with the infirmary girls. Help calm down the men.”

Oxton nodded, straightening her spine as she walked purposefully into the large tent. Angela took off, keeping an eye out for the commander as she crossed the camp. She didn’t see him among the officers roaming between the tents, and none of the ones she stopped could tell her anything new about the explosion.

“Maybe if we’re lucky, it was one of the Gerries blowin’ themselves up,” one officer suggested unhelpfully. Angela thanked him, anyway.

Fifteen minutes after the explosion, things seemed to start calming back down, and Angela finally circled back to the canteen, just in time to see an ambulance tearing up toward the camp. A few officers had to dodge out of the way as it slid to a stop in front of the canteen, the driver not even bothering to shut the engine down as they leapt out of the cab.

The driver, a young lady in her auxiliary uniform, was pale as the dead as she started to shout to the gathered crowd. “I need help, there’s a plane!”

One of the officers snorted, “what do you mean, ‘a plane’? There are lots of planes; there’s a war going on, if you haven’t noticed.”

“No, a _crashed_ plane!” The girl flushed with anger, “and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but _there’s a war going on_! Maybe not the time to piss around.”

Angela stepped between the two, hands raised. “Tell me about the plane, what happened?”

“I saw it fall out of the sky! It’s one of ours, I saw the colours.” The girl pointed in the direction she had arrived from. “Where’s the doctor? He needs to come with me.”

The same officer scoffed again, pointing to Angela. “The kraut’s the doctor.”

Either ignoring or missing the officer’s tone, the girl grabbed Angela’s forearm. “You need to come with me.”

Not waiting for Angela to reply, the girl hopped back into the ambulance cab, Angela quickly joining in on the passenger side. She hadn’t sat down before the driver was tearing out of the encampment, hardly waiting for the servicemen to get out of the way, leaving a few cursing angrily after the ambulance.

“You really a German?” The girl asked with a raised voice, though still Angela could barely understand her question at first over the engine.

“No, not German. Swiss.” She shook her head, ready to go on, but the girl nodded resolutely. Hitting a hard bump, Angela grabbed for the ceiling of the cab, praying that she wouldn’t get dislodged from the vehicle and sent tumbling out through the open side.

“Where’s your partner?” Angela asked, though she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. She found it odd for the girl to be driving all on her own—she was only about Oxton’s age.

The girl spared a moment to look at her like she had grown two heads. “Partner?”

“Don’t you have someone to help you move gurneys into the back?”

“Yeah, whatever soldier’s around that still has most of his limbs.” The girl snorted unfemininely. “The WAAC’s spread us so thin, there are barely enough girls to drive on their own, let alone paired up.”

Angela didn’t know how to respond, so she decided not to; the girl seemed more interested in pushing the ambulance until it’s gears groaned.

The destination was marked clearly ahead of them; a ribbon of black smoke cutting through the otherwise clear sky, visible as soon as they had cleared the encampment. Angela was by no means the best judge of distance, but estimated it to be about 2 kilometers from the lines, the wreck easy to spot upon the flat, barren farmland. Aside from its mark on the horizon, Angela could almost trick herself that there wasn’t a war zone behind her. The auxiliary driver continued to speed the automobile through the fields, and as they drew closer to the source of the column of smoke, the wreckage of the crashed plane could been seen.

The airplane had collided with the earth nose-first, and had stopped nearly stood on its end, wavering precariously as the propeller hiccupped. It was half-buried in the ground, though it kept chugging and trying to turn against the mud, the engine spitting smoke. The plane was lopsided in a jagged rut, the wings crumpled over the cockpit, obscuring the pilot and having knocked the plane’s gun out of its mounting apparatus. The body of the plane appeared to be more-or-less intact, despite all the smoke and flaming debris that had made a minefield of the surrounding area; the thin panelling of the craft had folded in on itself in a few spots, almost obscuring the red-white-blue bullseye on the fuselage, and a hand painted insignia of an eye. The tail of the plane was almost entirely missing, the huge gash where the majority of the smoke was pouring from, the lacquered wood splintered and charred from the artillery impact that had crashed the aircraft.

Angela scrambled out of the cab before the auxiliary girl had pulled to a full stop, already stepping toward the downed war machine.

“Doctor!” The auxiliary girl jumped from the ambulance, jogging to catch up. “Watch your step. Don’t want you twisting your ankle, then you’ll be no use to anyone.”

Angela looked at her sideways, watching the girl rolling the sleeves of her coat up to her elbows. “What’s your name?”

“Olivia.”

“Alright, Olivia. You ever handled a crashed plane?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Me neither.” Angela sighed. “We need to be quick—this wood is going to burn up. We find out if the pilot’s still breathing, we get him out. But I need you to listen to me. If I tell you to do something, you do it, alright?”

“I’ve handled injured men before, Doctor.”

“Men who were already on gurneys, who had already been seen to.”

Olivia looked at her seriously, and nodded. Carefully stepping around the flaming debris, they got to the downed plane; the smoke was almost suffocating, and before she choked Angela pulled her habit from her hair to tie around her mouth and nose. Olivia had pulled up the collar of her coat to similarly cover her face, squinting through the smog. They gave the propeller a wide breadth, but the heat becoming unbearable as they got closer to the body.

Angela started to move one of the split pieces of the upper wing, finding it to be heavier than she expected. Olivia had rounded to the other side of the plane, and reached to grab the far end of the section—grunting, the two women managed to move it off, pushing it to the ground. As it landed, it hit the blade of the propeller, causing it to jolt the engine, the nose of the plane belching fire.

Angela leapt back from the jumping flames, arms raised to protect her face. “Scheiße!”

Olivia had stumbled back a few feet, tripping over the upturned earth. She landed with a groan, but stood up quickly, scrambling back to the plane. They worked to push aside another section of the wing, careful not to drop it on the propeller this time as the cockpit was opened. Even over the spitting of the engine, Angela heard the younger girl’s sharp gasp.

“Well, shit,” she hissed. Inside the cockpit, the pilot was slumped forward against the controls of his dashboard. Through his back, Angela could see one of posts from the wings had pushed through the top of the pilot’s shoulder and out again just below the shoulder blade. Olivia cursed again. “That doesn’t look promising, Doc.”

Ignoring the driver, Angela reached in over the body of the plane, and grabbed at the man’s scarf, pushing it down into his coat. Quickly, she sought his pulse through the side of his throat, and was surprised to find it, weak, but there.

“He’s still alive,” she said quickly. “We need to get him out.”

Olivia’s eyes widened over the hem of her collar, and she looked back at the pilot’s wound. “The post?”

“It will have to come, too.” Angela said, hooking an arm under the pilot’s armpit, carefully avoiding contact with the post. She waited for Olivia to mimic her, and started to count down from three.

It took them two minutes to haul the unconscious man out of the wreckage, and into the back of the ambulance. Angela climbed in as well, getting her first good look at the man. His skin was a warm brown colour, the same as some of the Turkish men Angela had seen pass through the war camps she’d worked on. His closed eyes were heavy with black lashes, and his skin was smoother than any man’s she’d ever seen. She thought, briefly, before pushing the thought aside, that he was almost more pretty than handsome. But she forced past that unnecessary emotion in favour of inspecting the pilot’s other injuries.

Compared to the post, most of the pilot’s injuries seemed fairly superficial; some minor scratches across his face, a nose that might be broken judging by the swelling, and his one leg Angela was certain had also broken in the crash. But otherwise, the man was lucky to be alive.

She sat in the back of the truck for the drive back, holding the pilot on his side. Before Olivia pulled away from the wreckage, Angela glanced out from the open truck bed, the canvas framing the smoking wreckage of the plane—the flames were consuming the body, the wood splintering and cracking, only the eye insignia remaining, staring out at Angela as the ambulance pulled away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the ages of the characters in this had to be fiddled with to fit better into the setting. But hey, I finally found some way to put my history degree to good use!
> 
> Thanks to my friend Lanners for that sweet, sweet beta read.


	2. Chapter 2

The aluminum tags around the lucky pilot’s throat identified him as Faruq Amari. Angela didn’t bother with the serial numbers, since they meant nothing to her, but did make note the birthdate that had been printed on the disc—the pilot was about three years younger than Angela, at twenty-one years old—and that the man’s country of origin was England. So, not a Turk after all. She left them around his neck. The only time she had ever removed them from a soldier was if he died on her table. This Faruq hadn’t yet, though based on the injury she had to deal with, the tags were precariously on the edge of getting in the way.

Also around the pilot’s throat was a second chain, though at the end of it was an odd canister. It reminded Angela of the ones she had seen used on messenger birds that some of the officers used—she chuckled quietly, speaking to herself in German; “is that what you are? A messenger pigeon?”

“What?” Sister Oxton looked up from carefully dabbing away the soot and blood from where the post punctured the pilot’s coat, confused. Angela waved her off, but then held up the canister to the hanging lamp, to see it better.  

“Do you know what this is?”

“I ‘unno,” Oxton shrugged, returning to her work. “Maybe a bullet casing?”

“It’s too big for that, I think,” Angela said as she tried to pry it open with her bare hands, but couldn’t manage it. She set it aside with the man’s scarf, revolver, and flight cap before she let herself get too sidetracked.

The nurses first addressed the pilot’s most minor injuries; the leg that Angela had thought was broken in the field looked more like a badly sprained knee; not as disastrous an injury, but not easily dealt with by any means. At least with a break Angela could have cast the limb. She had Oxton pull aside a crutch for the pilot, whenever he would awake, and called that dealt with—the most difficult part was keeping the soldiers off their injuries after they were back upright.

To get the pilot’s leather jacket off, she had to cut it from his shoulder as Oxton propped him up for her to reach around. The whole time, she felt badly cutting it—she had never seen any soldier with such a nice uniform jacket, usually just the scratchy wool coats worn by the infantry men. But, she supposed, all pilots had leather coats. If she could find time, maybe she would try to mend it.

After the jacket, she found that Faruq was wearing a complete airman’s uniform—a dark blue-grey wool coat over a collared shirt and tie. Both had been stained through with blood that had since dried, and both layers had to be cut away as well.

Under that, Angela was pleased to find that the wound of the post was no longer bleeding, and actually passed through the outside of his chest, far enough away from his lungs (though she had already determined that his major organs had not been pierced, the saliva in the pilot’s mouth clear of blood and his breathing steady enough).

She was, however, surprised to find that the pilot had their chest bound beforehand, and after a quick appraisal, Angela determined that it was not the remnant dressing of a previous wound, but rather an intentional binding down of the pilot’s breasts.

Had anyone else but Oxton been there, they likely would have run to fetch the commander immediately. Instead, Oxton looked up at Angela with the doe-eyed look she got when she was uncertain of something, the look that always managed to make the girl look younger than she already was. Angela didn’t know what to tell her, and simply stared at the pilot, unsure herself of what to do with the information that the man in her charge was actually a woman.

Shaking away her surprise, Angela found her voice unexpectedly steady as she said, “we’ll need to be quick to remove the post and pack the wound.”

“Shouldn’t we tell someone? About _her_?”

Angela shook her head, biting her lower lip. “We’ll take care of that later. First we have to finish what we’ve started.”

The two bent over their work, which, despite the sudden revelation about the patient, was fairly standard. The pilot was not the first person Angela had treated who had been impaled on something—just the first pilot. And the first woman. Fortunately, it turned out the process of surgery did not change drastically due to the sex of the patient, though Angela found herself distracted by the binding across Faruq’s chest.

It didn’t look comfortable, and after the crash was soiled by sweat and blood—the operation only making the red stain spread further beyond what had dried already, even as Angela and Oxton packed the wound to staunch the bleeding. Angela realized that the binding would have to be replaced in order to prevent infection. For some reason, Angela felt her face grow hot at the thought of something so invasive—as if she weren’t already fiddling with the pilots insides—and threw herself back into the surgery before Oxton could notice her flush and ask what was wrong. The bindings would have to be left until later.

In all, the surgery took around an hour and a half to complete. As always, Angela found herself drained from the effort, desperately wanting to sit down if nothing else. Oxton seemed to have the same idea—the younger girl was leaning against the edge of a desktop, wiping red handprints across the front of her apron. An errant lock of hair had escaped the front of her habit, and she blew it out of her eyes.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Angela asked the question more to assure herself, but Oxton’s reaction did not help to bolster her. The other nurse shrugged, staring at the patient still unconscious in the cot they had moved her to.

“I guess. It was more or less the same, right?” She shrugged, and Angela shrugged back. “But now what do we do?”

“Well, I need to clean up before someone else is brought to the surgery.”

“Yes, and then we’ll get the commander?”

“Then _I’ll_ get the commander.” Angela gestured to the washbasin set behind Oxton. “ _You_ should wash up and get some dinner. And rest. You have morning shift in the infirmary, don’t you?”

Oxton gave her a stubborn look, but didn’t say anything as she took to diligently washing her hands. Before ducking out of the surgery, she stopped to regard Angela seriously. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the commander?”

Angela shook her head no, sighing. “Let me take care of him, alright? I’m the Doctor, remember?”

Oxton snorted. “Don’t pull the superior officer card on me, Ziegler.”

“I will, if it gets you to go eat,” Angela said, flapping her hands in a shooing motion.

With only a small but annoyed “fine,” Oxton left, leaving Angela and the pilot alone in the tent.

Angela was quicker than usual to change the pilot’s bandages—though perhaps not her best work, once it was done, she could finally take a step back and breathe. There was nothing particularly nerve-wracking about female anatomy, especially now with the war—after three years of living in close quarters with at least twelve other women at any given time, social graces had somewhat fallen to the wayside between them all—but Angela’s hands were still shaking as she handled the bandage scissors, stripping off the soiled wrappings and replacing them with new. She knew why she was so nervous; she was reminded of when she was little, and she once broke a vase of her mother’s and how her hands wouldn’t stop quaking until she confessed to the error. The guilt was going to eat her alive if she didn’t tell someone, but, at the same time, would it be fair of her to reveal something so dramatic without the awareness of the pilot?

Angela quickly set to tidying the surgery to put it out of mind—she washed down the tools and table top, then placed them into what little semblance of order Angela had developed over her few weeks as doctor. It was only a small room, so she quickly ran out of distractions from the pilot; desperately trying not to stare, she set a clean shirt on the bedside, and picked up the wash basin as she ducked out of the tent.

The sky was the perfect blue of pre-dusk, and the world was quiet; despite the events that had transpired earlier, everything seemed to have returned back to normal, and the camp was mostly quiet as she walked around the back of the surgery. Everyone else was having supper, she supposed—her stomach was so twisted with anxiety that she wasn’t hungry. As she poured the soiled water out from the basin, she worked through the conversation she would have to have with Commander Morrison sooner or later. It didn’t seem fair to bring him in while the pilot was unconscious, unable to defend themselves. Maybe there was a perfectly sound reason for a woman to be flying a British plane. Angela had heard rumours that the Russians let women fly—perhaps England had decided to follow suit without telling anyone.

She hoped that commander Morrison would know what to do, but at the same time, she feared that what he would do would be send the woman out for execution. Or interrogation? Admittedly, she wasn’t entirely certain what the punishment for concealing one’s sex in the army was. Or how it was even possible to get away with in the first place; from her understanding, the screening process for soldiers was fairly extensive, though she only knew of it tangentially.

She realized she had been standing in the damp grass holding the empty tin bowl, staring off into the middle distance for some time when a crashing sound jolted her from her reverie. Startled, she whirled around, searching for the source of the noise, but saw no one else running in a panic as they had that morning—and then again, the crashing came from behind her, and she realized it was the sound of a wooden table being knocked over, and many small items hitting the ground after it.

“Scheiße!” Angela dropped the basin, picking up her skirts as she bolted around the length of the tent.

She barreled through the entrance of the surgery to find the pilot, now suddenly awake, back turned to the opening of the tent. The woman was crouching among the scattered surgical implements Angela had just so carefully ordered, and for an irrational second, that was what most alarmed her, before her sense returned to her and she recalled that this woman had been in a serious state not five minutes earlier.

“Excuse me?” Angela’s voice came out far shakier than she had intended it to, but she forced herself to take a step toward the pilot, who had stiffened at the sound of another person’s voice.

The pilot stood and turned in one fluid motion, and Angela realized two things at once—first, that the woman was very, very tall, and second, she had her revolver in hand and had leveled it at the middle of Angela’s face.

Angela raised her hands in surrender as the woman stared her down. Her eyes were wild, but focused sharply, and the most peculiar shade of brown—almost gold. Her stance as she held the gun was uncomfortable, her arm on the injured side of her body curled to her chest as the other was at full extension, and weight shifted onto her uninjured leg—even injured, though, Faruq obviously knew how to use a gun far better than Angela. After sizing the doctor up and seemingly deciding that she wasn’t a real threat, the pilot spoke; “Are you German?”

“What?”

“Are. You. German.” The pilot’s voice was clear, though she had an accent Angela couldn’t quite place.

“No, I’m—” Angela had to quickly bite back her usual tirade on her nationality, “—not. I’m British.”

“Hmm,” the pilot shifted her stance, gun lowering slightly, but still drawn on Angela, at her chest now. The irrational part of Angela’s brain started to prattle on, that _a larger center of mass was a more efficient target for a moving target, or in an instance where one needs to stop a threat without killing them; however damage to the ribs and lungs can be fatal or cause complications in the functions of the heart—_ Angela had to pull her focus away from the gun, and back to the pilot’s face. Faruq didn’t quite look convinced, but her expression was practically unreadable. “You don’t sound British.”

“Well, neither do you!” She winced at her unintentionally defensive tone, but the towering woman only quirked a brow.

“Where is it?” The woman raised the flat side of the gun to gesture to the hollow of her throat.

“What?”

“The message,” the pilot growled, circling over the dog tags around her throat. “Where is it?”

Angela glanced around the tent—the table top she had set the canister on before had been upturned—and spotted the leather flight cap on the floor, the end of the cylindrical tube poking out from underneath. Angela pointed nervously, and Faruq immediately stooped to snatch it up; for the split second the gun was off of her, she found that she could breathe, but it was short lived as soon as the pilot stood again, and the pistol was back.  
                “This,” the woman said, slipping the chain over her head with a wince—Angela fought the impulse to tell her not to move her injured arm—as her hand went to tightly envelop the small cylinder, “this is worth more than your life.”

Angela didn’t know how to respond to such a strange remark, so she simply nodded.

Faruq tried to lean forward, to look past Angela’s shoulder and see out through the opening of the tent. “Where are we?”

“North of France, near Belgium. Near the trenches of Lens, if you head further northeast.”

Faruq lowered the gun all the way finally, allowing Angela to slowly lower her hands. “Where’s your commanding officer? Or the doctor?”

“ _I’m_ the doctor,” Angela said. “I was going to fetch the Commander before you started tearing my tent apart. I didn’t think it would be fair to get him while you couldn’t defend yourself.”

“They let women be doctors now?” The pilot’s eyes narrowed as she tried to determine if Angela was telling the truth.

“Only when the real doctor gets blown up.” Angela couldn’t help but snap, “Besides, I wasn’t aware they let women be pilots, either.”

The woman seemed slightly taken aback from Angela’s attitude, and looked as though she was fighting back a smirk. Finally, she lowered the gun completely to her side, though she didn’t touch the safety. “They don't. As far as Britain is concerned, I’m a man.”

There was a silent moment between the two women, and Angela clasped her hands tightly in front of her—they were shaking again, though this time she was fairly certain it was because of having just been held at gunpoint. Though, thinking about it reminded her to be nervous about telling the Commander about the pilot’s true identity.

She, very quickly, decided that it wasn’t her problem. At least, not immediately.

“Well, you better put on a shirt if you want to uphold that pretense,” Angela pointed to the top she had left on the woman’s bed before, now strewn over the floor. “I do need to fetch Commander Morrison.”

The woman nodded, stooping again to pluck it up. She locked the safety on her revolver before shoving it into the back of her pants, then gingerly lifting the shirt over her head.

“Watch your arm,” Angela warned, but the woman was already wincing as she forced it through the sleeve. “Stop moving it. And watch your leg.”

Suddenly looking very uncomfortable, the pilot shifted weight to her good foot, trying to find a comfortable position to stand, then finally lifted the cot back to its spot and sat herself down. Noticing a scalpel underfoot, Faruq kicked it away, and Angela couldn’t help but groan. It didn’t seem to matter if the soldier was a man or a woman, they all had a complete disregard for things that weren’t theirs.

“Stay there,” she sighed, leaving the tent again.

\---

She found Commander Morrison in his office, a tent on the outskirts of the field hospital. He was set up there so that, if needed, he was in reach of the frontlines; but, for the most part, Morrison’s job was to make the lists of the deceased to send off to the typists in Calais. Every time Angela saw him he looked more and more tired--the first time she had met him, his hair had been blonde, but over the last year he’d begun to grey—and like everyone else stationed on camp, he wore the same bruise-coloured bags under his eyes. Angela knocked on the post by the doorway, and he looked up from his desk, paperwork strewn under the light of a kerosene lamp.

“Doctor Ziegler,” his voice was almost a sigh no matter what he said lately, “I suppose you’re here about the pilot?”

“Yes, he’s awake now, if you’re available to debrief him.”

Morrison hummed his understanding as he pushed his work into a haphazard pile and stood. “Lead the way.”

Angela wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to walking beside the Commander through the camp. He didn’t seem bothered by it, and usually if she had to fetch him to inspect the infirmary, he would strike up a perfectly friendly, if not slightly stilted, conversation. Morrison was not an unkind person, especially compared to some of the other officers Angela had served under in the past, but he was not the best at interacting with people on a civilian basis.

Tonight though, the man was too tired to talk, which suited her just fine. She spent the walk reminiscing about how nice it was when the old doctor was still alive, and how she never had to worry about saving pilots from plane crashes, or keeping a potentially treasonous secret about them being a woman, or having to keep the surgery tent from being ransacked (which, apparently, she couldn’t manage anyway).

At the sight of the commander entering the surgery, Faruq snapped to attention where she stood, now in the center of the surgery with a tray in hand. Angela saw that the pilot had decided to take the opportunity to try and clean the tent after upturning it; the majority of the room was still on the floor, but she had tried, which Angela was impressed by. She saluted the commander with a formal “sir,” and he acknowledged the gesture with a curt nod as he said, “at ease.”

Awkwardly, the pilot set down the tin tray she had been holding on the nearest tabletop, then turned to face Morrison, who had found the desk opposite the cot and was settling into the chair.

“You can sit,” he said to Faruq, who nearly dropped into the cot as though he had told her she had to. He glanced at Angela, then looked around the tent uncomfortably, noticing there was no third place to sit— “Oh. Um.”

“I’m fine with standing, sir,” she lied. At this point she would need to lay down to recover from how long she’d been on her feet. Morrison nodded, then turned back to face Faruq.

“So, all I know is that you’re a pilot, and that you crashed just outside my camp. Mind filling in the blanks?”

Faruq paused to clear her throat, and when she spoke, her voice was even—and, Angela noted, slightly deeper than it had been before between just the two of them— “My name is Faruq Amari, sir. I was flying in from the east, from the Belgian front, when the Germans on your front here shot me down.”

“I wasn’t aware there were flyboys out that way.”

“Technically, sir, there aren’t.”

Morrison cocked an eyebrow, and Faruq glanced sheepishly at Angela, as if not sure if she should proceed with the doctor in the room. Morrison noticed the look and turned to Angela himself— “You can trust the doctor, Amari. She won’t tell a soul.”

“Pardon me, sir, but I don’t think this is information that civilians should be privy to.”

“Ziegler is more trustworthy than a lot of my boys on the front, and a lot smarter, too. If what you’re saying is important, you can rely on her to keep it safe.”

Angela felt her face burn at the compliment, but didn’t feel that it was an appropriate moment to rebuff the commander’s praise. Faruq still looked uncertain, glancing at Angela once more before turning her gaze back to the commander.

“My unit is based out of London to run messages across the lines. We’re some of the best fliers Britain has to offer, sir. The unit was originally in place before the telegraph lines were up, while we had no way to get word to Russia—fighting the Gerries was just a side job. We’ve not been an official squadron since the first year of the war—as far as anyone outside is concerned, we were disbanded, because after the posts were set up, they started us running more,” Faruq glanced at Angela again, “sensitive matters. Have you heard of the Overwatch Project, sir?”

Morrison glanced sidelong at Angela now, but didn’t waver on his claims that she could stay, despite the trepidation in his expression. “Can’t say I have. But word doesn’t get out this far north unless its need-to-know.”

“Then, what you need to know is that this,” Faruq’s hand was around the small canister at her throat again, “is information that could help end the war, and the longer it takes for it to get to London the longer we’re out here in the muck.”

Morrison nodded, his usually severe expression unfaltering; “If your unit doesn’t officially exist, who do we contact to get word about you being grounded to?”

The pilot, who for the short time Angela had been interacting with had not for a second seemed anything less than fully capable and perhaps overly serious, gaped slightly at the question—her eyes widened as, completely unguarded, she floundered to think of an answer to the commander’s question.

“Sir,” Angela stepped forward, and the pilot’s startled expression gave way to relieve, surprisingly, “if I may--Amari has only just awoken from his surgery. I might suggest that you reconvene tomorrow? I need to fetch food for him and prepare a bed in the infirmary.”

At the word of the infirmary, the panicked look was back on the pilot’s face, which Morrison seemed to catch— “not the infirmary. Not with this _Overwatch Project_ —don’t want anyone snooping. Set him up in the doctor’s quarters, Angela.”

She started to protest, but bit her tongue; she had been staying in the Doctor’s tent herself since she’d been granted the title, though technically she was still supposed to be bunking with the other nurses. It was understood between the nurses that it was to be kept secret, though all the sisters knew that was where to find her. Hiding her disappointment, she nodded. “Yes sir.”

Morrison stood and left without much more than the expected salute from Amari and a respectfully bowed head from Angela; as he exited the tent, Angela could hear him half-stifle a yawn. She waiting for a count of fifteen seconds before turning back to Faruq, and motioning for her to stand.

“I’ll take you to my—the doctor’s quarters, then.”

Faruq stood, but refused to follow. Angela turned with her hands on her hips and an annoyed sigh. “What?”

“I need you to swear that you won’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what? About the ‘Overwatch’ thing?” Angela gave the taller woman a withering stare. “I’m not some gossip.”

“Not just that— _this_ ,” the pilot gestured down at herself. “I know what I’m doing is treasonous, but I’ve made it this long without issue, and if you get in the way of me completing my mission, I—”

The woman had aimed a finger at Angela’s face, and all she could think was ‘ _at least it’s not the revolver this time_.’ Annoyed, she swatted Faruq’s hand away.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, for one, I already didn’t give you away to the commander—who I did have ample opportunity to tell—and for another, I’m not necessarily in a position to go on preaching about the woman’s proper place in the war.” Angela looked at Faruq coolly, “and I would thank you to not point fingers at me in my own surgery.”

Faruq’s seething quickly shattered, and the woman turned sheepish, physically wilting under Angela’s look. “Sorry.”

The pilot followed Angela out of the surgery and out through the camp, silent until their arrival at the dark tent that had lately become Angela’s personal haunt. She stepped in first, quickly lighting the lantern on the desk opposite the door, and gathering her discarded coat and an extra pair of stockings from the foot of the bed, and a pair of muddy boots she still hadn’t gotten to clean that had been kicked under the bed frame. She stood with the clothing bundled in her arms, unsure of what to do with it now, as Faruq walked in and glanced around the small space, a small frown on her face.

“I thought they would have given the doctor a bigger tent.”

“It’s a field hospital—space isn’t exactly at a premium.” Angela watched the pilot walk to the bedside cabinet, and reach toward a photo framed there, and the doctor suddenly panicked— “Please don’t touch that!”

Faruq ignored her, holding the framed photo of Angela’s parents and her up to the light for a closer look. Angela had been about 11 when the photo had been taken, her hair long and curled over her shoulders, eyes bright, and the only one smiling where she stood between her mother and father. The photographer had told her not to bother with the grin, that her face would get tired—which it had—but she’d insisted. “Is this your family?”

“Yes, yes, now, please,” Angela wove her arm out from the bundle of clothing, palm opened toward the photo frame. “Please, give it to me.”

Faruq passed it over, then only just seemed to realise that Angela was holding all of the personal items in the room bundled in her arms. “Am I kicking you out of your bed?”

“You are. But I wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place.” Angela shrugged, almost dropping the stockings from her pile. She scrambled to reel them back in, then quickly added, “It’s the commander’s orders, anyway,” as she noticed the woman was looking guilty.

The pilot was strangely expressive now that the gun had been put away. She shuffled uncomfortably, staring at the bed and back at Angela.

“Sit down, already. I have to get your food.”

Before Faruq could protest, Angela darted out of the tent, beelining for the nurses’ quarters set up across the way; she dropped her clothes and photo on top of the cot that had been her’s before her promotion, and a few of the nurses that had gathered in the lodgings snickered, asking her if she’d finally been kicked out of the nice bed—she ignored them, practically jogging to the canteen to gather up whatever was left of dinner. Tray in hand, she headed back, and caught Faruq red-handed snooping through the desk drawers. The woman jolted away from the desk as though it had electrocuted her, but Angela just laughed drily.

“There’s nothing interesting in there,” Angela said, setting the dinner tray down on the table top, “whatever you find, you can keep. Most of the interesting files and things are in the surgery, anyway.”

Faruq nodded uncomfortably, not seeming interested in moving so long as Angela was watching. She sighed, gesturing toward the food, before turning to leave.

“Good night, Faruq.”

“Doctor.”

Angela was halfway out of the tent before the pilot piped up again— “Fareeha,” the woman choked on the word, as if instantly regretting it. “Fareeha’s my real name.”

Angela raised an eyebrow at her, then nodded; “Fareeha, then.”

_Fareeha Amari,_ she thought as she walked back to the nurses’ quarters. _The lady pilot. Who carries_ something _that could end the war itself._

She couldn’t stop herself from laughing, drawing a few concerned looks from the other ladies—but she paid them no mind. They had no idea how complicated the crashed pilot had just made things for them all. Or, for Angela in particular, at least.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day was busy as soon as dawn broke.

The first new arrival to the field hospital was a young soldier from the Australian Imperial Force, who was gawky and had the general look of someone who hadn’t grown into his features yet, with a sharp nose and unkempt hair that stood on end—Angela guessed he was probably only just old enough to enlist. The kid had, somehow, managed to blow his own leg off with his own grenade, as he would loudly proclaim to anyone who was close enough to hear; “In my bloody sleep, you know! Blew me own damn foot to pieces, can you imagine waking up with no foot?”

He’d usually then dissolve into a manic fit of giggles, and whichever nurse was attending him would take a nervous step back—Angela assumed he was delirious from the blood loss at this point, and the fact that he kept scaring off whoever was redressing the stump was only making it worse.

A second Aussie had been brought in with him—he was easily the largest human Angela had ever seen, with a mean look to his face and stark-white hair—who had apparently been in the same bunker as the kid, and who had lost a few fingers to the boy’s grenade. He sat, mostly silent, holding his hand up for the nurses to stitch back together, and glared daggers at his younger countryman in the next cot over. The nurses whispered between each other that if the big brute had had all ten fingers available he would probably have wrapped them around the kid’s throat by now.

Every time the kid started up his hyena-laugh, the man would growl at him to “shut up,” the two words carrying enough threat to make his attending nurse step away, too, in case the giant did, in fact, decide to murder the kid.

Despite the straightforward procedures for both, taking care of the Australians took about an hour more than it should have, and had taken the effort of every nurse on-duty in the infirmary. Angela didn’t get to check up on Fareeha until it was almost noon, and when she did, she found the pilot standing in the middle of the lane between the tents, crutch lazily held by her side.

“Faree—um, Faruq!” Angela dashed forward, wrenching the crutch from the pilot’s grasp and shoving it into place under her good arm. “What are you doing out?”

“You just left me in the office!” Angela could almost swear the taller woman was whining; “I was hungry, so I was going to get food.”

“Do you even know where the canteen is?” Angela shook her head in disbelief, as Fareeha shrugged her good shoulder. “Never mind that—what were you doing just standing out in the middle of camp?”

Fareeha simply pointed up, and Angela followed her direction, seeing a squadron of biplanes pass overhead, each with a tail painted red, white and blue bullseye. Angela hadn’t even noticed the sound of their engines, the distant whirring having blended into the din of the camp.

Angela looked back at Fareeha’s face, still turned skywards. “Do you know them?”

“Doubt it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know unless I saw the pilot themself.” Fareeha turned her attention back down to earth, a shy grin on her face. “Besides, my squad doesn’t technically exist, right? So, it's more of a matter of whether _they_ know _me_.”

“How many planes are there, in service?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.” Fareeha laughed drily. “I don’t know—lots? More now that the Americans are involved. No one ever gave me a number.”

Angela hummed thoughtfully, but suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be getting the pilot back into the tent. “You need to go back inside.”

“But the canteen,” Fareeha’s voice started to rise in protest, but Angela hushed her, not wanting to have to deal with another scene after that morning.

“I’ll bring you food, okay?”

“But it's so nice out, why don’t you let me eat outside?” Fareeha gave her an earnest look, adding, “I’ll go back after.”

“You’ve already had more time out of bed than most men in the infirmary. And, besides,” Angela glanced around nervously, “shouldn't you be worried about someone seeing you?”

Fareeha gave the doctor an incredulous look— “I’m far from the only stranger in the camp.”

“You know what I mean.” Angela huffed in frustration, but after taking a second to mull it over, she wondered if she was being reasonable; what harm could come of sitting outside? And if Angela stayed with Fareeha, she could intercept anyone who got too interested in the pilot. So, she relented, and led Fareeha through the camp to the canteen.

Angela left Fareeha at the roots of an oak tree a stone’s throw from the canteen. It was a nice enough spot to sit while it was dry, and now that its leaves were filled back in after the cold of winter, it was the shadiest spot outdoors. If not for the distant pop of gunfire and rumble of convoy engines passing by, the spot may have been considered picturesque. When Angela returned with their trays, she found Fareeha leaning against the oak’s trunk, injured leg stretched out before her, and looking more comfortable than Angela thought was entirely appropriate considering the circumstances. But she simply set Fareeha’s tray on the ground beside her, then took her own seat with her back straight against the trunk.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” the pilot said, her eyes still closed which her face tilted toward the sun. “I know the way back now.”

“I don’t want you unattended.” Angela carefully tore a piece of her stale bread roll off to pop into her mouth, making sure no crumbs fell onto her lap. “What if someone asks you questions?”

The corners of the woman’s mouth turned up slightly. “I’m sure I can manage, Doctor.”

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Angela said matter-of-factly, tearing off a second piece of bread.

Fareeha sat up, pulling her tray into her lap and immediately devouring her own bread roll. “You’re still nervous?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not really.” The pilot shrugged. “I’ve been living like this for four years now. I don’t dwell on it.”

Angela slowly nibbled at the corner of her bread. She considered how it would feel to pretend to be an entirely different person for four whole years, and found that she couldn’t fathom how someone could manage that “How did you even manage it?”

Fareeha laughed drily. “That’s a secret.”

Am I the first person to know that you even have a secret?”

“Since I left home, yes.” As if to avoid continuing the conversation, Fareeha turned her attention back to her lunch tray, and started to excavate the overly-thick stew from its shallow bowl. Angela followed her example, facing out at the camp and watching as officers and nurses milled from place to place.

“Seems awful lonely.”

Angela hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and Fareeha paused in polishing off her stew, glancing at the doctor from the corner of her eye.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m lonely--what I’m doing is more important than that.” The pilot finished off her lunch, then, using her crutch, made it back onto her feet. “Thank you for lunch, Doctor.”

Angela watched in silence as Fareeha hobbled back into camp. When she turned to eat her stew, she found it had gone cold.

\---

Angela didn’t see the pilot again until that evening, and the woman barely acknowledged her as she brought the woman her dinner tray. Fareeha was at the desk, writing on a piece of paper she had scavenged from the desk with a ferocity Angela was not used to seeing from someone wielding a fountain pen.

As Angela set the dinner tray down on the desk she tried to steal a peek at what the pilot was working on. Fareeha didn’t make any move to conceal it, which Angela quickly realized was because the writing wasn’t in English—or any other language Angela recognized. The script was composed of elaborate loops, and as the pilot wrote, her hand moved across the page in the opposite direction then Angela was used to seeing. The practice was simultaneously strange and mesmerizing, and Angela found herself staring at the foreign words as they appeared under the pen nib.

Fareeha eventually tired of her observation, and set down the pen with a huff. “Can I help you?”

“What is it?” Angela asked the question only half expecting an answer. Fareeha looked up at her only long enough to meet her gaze, then picked the pen up again.

“A letter. To my Commanding Officer.”

Angela briefly considered pressing the conversation, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort it would take to wrestle answers out of the pilot.

The next day, when she and Morrison went to meet with Fareeha, Angela saw that the letter had been left out on the desktop, though it looked like it had been crumpled up then flattened out again.

Fareeha was sitting on her cot waiting for them. Her crutches were leaning against the cot frame, and pointedly looking at Angela, she used them to lean on as she stood to salute the commander.

“Amari,” he replied with a slight nod. “I’ve arranged for you to meet with the camp’s head telegraph operator; he’s agreed to help you find and contact your squadron.”

“Lead the way, then,” Fareeha said, and the Commander headed the way across the camp.

As they walked, Fareeha fell back to keep pace with Angela.

“Not to be rude,” she kept her voice low and her head down, “but why are you coming?”

“The Commander asked me to—I assume it’s to keep everyone who knows who you are in the loop?”

Fareeha seemed to consider this for a moment, then looked back at Angela with a surprisingly conspiratorial glint to her eyes. “Well, it seems only fair, since you’re the only one who really knows me then, hm?”

Fareeha punctuated the statement with a genuine grin that Angela had not expected at all. She could only manage to nod solemnly, and before she could choke out a response, Fareeha had hobbled off after the Commander.

The tele-communications centre was on the opposite side of camp from the canteen. There were only three operators on site, since it was a smaller field base, and two of them had exited the tent hurriedly when the Commander and his company arrived. This only left the head operator, who scrambled to stand up from his desk and salute Morrison, with a coughed “Sir!”

The operator was both tall and wide, and the specimen of an ideal soldier if not for his poor eyesight, made obvious by the spectacles he wore that made his eyes look rather beady, and his awkward disposition, as though he’d never learned how to manage his large frame. His black hair was cut short but wild

“Winston,” Morrison replied, and motioned for the operator to retake his seat. He did, but noticing the pilot and the Doctor; he half-stood a second time, then seemed to reconsider, falling heavily into his seat. Morrison gestured back at the guests. “This is our pilot, Faruq Amari. And I assume you’ve met Doctor Ziegler.”

“Of course! Good afternoon,” Winston quickly shuffled some papers on his desk, and indicated the vacant seats left behind by his coworkers. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both properly. I would say I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, looking at Fareeha, “but that would be untrue—I’m told you have your hands on something important and classified.”

Morrison looked unamused at the operator’s blunt phrasing, but pressed on. “Yes. I should reiterate that what we’re seeking to accomplish here today cannot leave the confines of this tent, let alone this camp. The severity of the matter is incomparable to anything else we’ve had to handle in the past—if you’re uncomfortable, Winston, I can find someone else able to take on the task.”

“Me? No, I’m not uncomfortable!” The operator pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m happy to be of service, sir. I’m just not certain of what the situation is, exactly.”

“That’s why I’ve brought Amari with me today. To get some help with this,” from the interior pocket of his coat, Commander Morrison pulled the small canister. Angela hadn’t noticed before that Fareeha was no longer wearing the chain herself, and was suddenly annoyed by her lack of observation. It made sense that the Commander would have the Overwatch Project canister, though.

She tried her hardest to pay attention as Morrison explained the situation to the operator. The bespectacled man was listening intently, though the Commander’s explanation was incredibly dry. Fareeha, sitting between Angela and Morrison, didn’t appear to be paying attention to the two men either. Instead, she stared at the maps pinned to the back wall, studying the colourful markers indicating all the major field camps along the Belgian front, and would glance back to the canister in the Commander’s grasp. She startled from her focus both times the Commander asked her to pitch into the discussion, but she seamlessly answered the Commander’s questions both times.

Angela, on the other hand struggled not to nod off. Fortunately the Commander only drew attention to her as they were readying to leave—

“If there are any concerns you need to communicate to Amari, go through Doctor Ziegler first.” Commander Morrison’s expression briefly turned stony. “Just in case, it’s best to have a go-between for sensitive materials.”

Winston nodded seriously. “Of course. I’ll speak to Doctor Ziegler if I need anything.”

With that finality, the operator returned to his paperwork, Morrison returned the canister to his pocket, and led the two women back out of the tent.

Making their way back through camp, Angela spotted Oxton watching them as they passed the infirmary.

\---

The young woman ambushed her later that evening, as Angela was preparing for bed—

“I thought the Commander would have gotten rid of _her_ by now,” Oxton hissed, eyes shifting back and forth to try and spy any eavesdroppers. Angela shushed her. She tried to turn away and block the younger nurse with a curtain of her hair as she brushed it, but the girl snatched away her comb.

“Shush yourself! You haven’t kept me in the loop for any of this, Ziegler.”

“Maybe,” Angela whispered harshly, “I haven’t had time to tell you, and it is _really important_ that I don’t tell you here, right now.”

Oxton huffed, but offered her back her comb. “Fine, but you owe me a story, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Promise?”

Angela sighed, but conceded. “Yes, I promise.”

\---

A thunderhead rolled in over the frontlines the next day, and the storm didn’t show any sign of stopping.

Which meant everything was soggy, so Angela’s day was mostly her fielding the complaints from the men in the infirmary. It seemed that most of them were of the impression that she could control the weather, which was irritating at first, and didn’t get any better as the day went on. The Australian boy, unlike his bunkmates, seemed determined to escape the tent and traipse around in the muck—three times the nurses caught him halfway out the door, and had to drag him back to his bed.

Mostly, Angela was impressed that the kid had managed to sneak off at all, with only one leg and one arm, both bandaged heavily against his burns, but determination was a hell of a drug, she supposed.

The rain seemed determined to continue overnight, and Angela was reminded of how sorely she missed having a proper roof over her head, and a hardwood floor under foot. The canteen was the closest thing to a proper building that the camp had, but the boards that made up the roof were old and let through leaks, and the rafters above would bow with the wind if it dared blow too hard. It only made her sadder to sit in something that seemed like a poor excuse for a building.

Before the war, she had thought her mother’s countryside manor was excessive in both size and style, a “quaint” architectural achievement afforded by the wealth of her father’s family, which Mrs. Ziegler had inherited when her husband had died. Though her opinion of the house’s superfluity hadn’t changed much, she did miss the marble floors of the foyer, and the way it reflected the light that sparkled through the crystal chandelier than hung overhead. She missed the view from the bay window in her bedroom, where she would curl up and read a book. And, more than anything, she missed her bed, and its soft mattress and down-filled pillows.

Thinking about her room back in England, unfortunately, did not help her sleep. Thinking of the soft coverlets of her bed at home only emphasized the scratchy wool of her blanket, the thunder overhead boomed and rattled the tent posts, but wasn’t loud enough still to stifle the snores and sniffling of her bunkmates. Irritated, she finally sat up, throwing the ugly, uncomfortable blanket off of her legs. It only took her a moment to decide what she was going to do instead of sleep—if she couldn’t rest, then she would get work done.

From under her bed, she pulled out her boots, slipping them on—then, she collected her small sewing kit, and the nearly-forgotten leather pilot’s jacket. She hadn’t meant to take it with her when she was cleaning up the surgery after her first meeting with Fareeha, but somehow it had ended up with her things when she wasn’t paying attention.

Pulling the jacket over her head to protect herself from the downpour, she bravely stepped out into the night, and was ready to head to the canteen to work in silence, when she noticed a light from the corner of her eye. The light was the unmistakable warm glow of a lantern, blooming against the canvas of a tent, standing out in the pitch black of the stormy evening. Turning fully, Angela saw that the tent that the lantern was burning within was the Doctor’s quarters.

For a moment, she waffled about going to see Fareeha, wondering how absurd it would be to turn up, unannounced, at midnight, with the pilot’s coat as a make-shift umbrella. But thunder shook the earth under her feet and made the decision for her, Angela squealing in an unlady-like manner as she darted for cover in the Doctor’s tent.

Fareeha was lying flat on the cot, the blanket kicked to the foot of the bed. When Angela burst through the entrance of the tent, she nearly threw herself off the bed with the force she sat up.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m sorry!” Angela struggled with rolling the entrance back into place as the wind followed her inside.

“Close the door!” Fareeha jumped to her feet, and grabbed a corner of the canvas, trying to help the doctor wrestle it into place. They managed to secure it down as the rain pelted the outside harder, the storm picking up, and for a second, the two women simply stood trying to catch their breath+ “God, Doctor Ziegler, it’s the middle of the night, why the hell are you bursting into the tent like a mad woman?”

“I’m sorry, I—I was going to the canteen and the thunder… I couldn’t sleep, and I was just—”

“Wait, is that my jacket?”

Angela looked down at the heap of leather that had fallen to the floor in the kerfuffle of her entrance, and sheepishly stooped to pick it up, folding it over her arms. “Oh, uh. Yes.”

“I was wondering what happened to it. Can I have it back?” Fareeha started to reach for the jacket, but Angela pulled away.

“No! Uh, I was going to fix it.”

“What?”

“When you came here first, it needed to be cut up to get it off you,” Angela unfolded the jacket to show her, the leather still showing the rough tear and dried blood as well as the clean cuts. “I feel terrible for ruining it, it seems like such a nice jacket. I meant to fix it up earlier, but hadn’t had the chance yet.”

Had she not known better, Angela would have thought she’d seen the pilot blush. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” she said, folding the jacket back over her arm. “But I want to.”

Fareeha opened her mouth to say something, but the sound was lost to the crash of thunder overhead, the tent suddenly illuminated from the outside by a blinding flash of lightning. Angela jumped in surprise, accidentally stumbling into the pilot, who reached out to brace her against her chest with a wince.

Angela quickly pulled away, worried she’d injured Fareeha further.  “Ah, sorry! Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Fareeha hissed, rolling her injured shoulder, which only made her grit her teeth harder. Angela reached out to try and stop her, but the pilot was already stepping away, back toward the cot. “Are you alright, doctor? You seem a bit jumpy.”

“Oh,” Angela laughed nervously. “It’s just the storm, I’ve, uh… never been a fan of thunder.”

“I understand. Thunder’s never really bothered me, though. I just wish it weren’t so loud so I could sleep.”

Angela straightened up. “I should leave you, then. I’m sorry, I didn’t think…”

“And have you back out in the storm, which you just told me you’re afraid of?” Fareeha huffed. “Please. I’m not that cruel. You can stay, It doesn’t bother me.”

“I don’t want to disturb you.”

“You won’t.”

Angela tried to think of an excuse, but couldn’t come up with one--furthermore, she realised she genuinely wanted to stay. The pilot seemed to be in a chattier mood today, and Angela was still curious about who she really was; perhaps this was the opportunity to learn something.

“Fine,” she relented, taking a seat at the desk. “Just until the storm passes.”

The two women sat in complete silence for the next ten minutes or so; Angela focused on cleaning the leather of any dried blood, pretending not to notice the pilot staring at her out of the corner of her eye. She expected that they would continue to sit quietly, but to her surprise, Fareeha broke the silence.

“I’ve realised, you know more about me than I know about you, doctor,” the woman said wryly, “How did you end up here?”

“The same way as most,” Angela said carefully, a rehearsed answer, “my country needed me, so I volunteered.”

“Yes, yes,” Fareeha said dismissively, “that’s the polite answer. But why are _you_ here?”

“It’s not that exciting a story.”

“Tell me anyway?”

Angela sighed. “My family lived in Switzerland until I was ten years old. I grew up comfortably, because my father had inherited his family’s wealth at a young age. He was a well-known physician, and my mother was the perfect wife.” Noticing Fareeha’s peculiar look, she clarified—“my father died when I was twelve.”

“So, you wanted to become a nurse because of your father?”

Angela laughed dryly. “Not necessarily. I wanted to become a nurse because I didn’t want to be in England. My mother was desperately trying to marry me off to any wealthy man that would take me, especially after the war was declared. They put the call out for nurses to aide on the front lines, and I went out as soon as I was able.”

Fareeha looked surprised, “you’re a runaway bride?”

“Well, no, I was never engaged. But I was close to it.”

“So I suppose you escaped just in time then?”

Angela’s laugh was earnest this time. “You could say that.”

The two settled into silence again, Angela returning her focus to her thread and needle. The next time she looked up, she noticed that the pilot was starting to nod off. Fareeha’s head jerked up awkwardly as she caught herself falling asleep. Blearily, she blinked at Angela. “Has the rain stopped?”

Angela stopped to actually listen for the first time since sitting down, and realised that the white noise of the rain against the tent had faded into silence.

“I believe it has.” She folded the jacket back up, collecting her small sewing kit as she stood to leave. “I should let you sleep, Fareeha.”

Fareeha shrugged noncommittally. “You don’t have to. It’s your tent.”

“You need rest, and I’m keeping you awake with the light.” She made her way to leave the tent. “Please don’t feel the need to be overly hospitable on my behalf. Goodnight, Fareeha.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate, doctor,” Fareeha said, yawning into the back of her hand. Angela turned to look out the entrance she was holding open, and saw the moon hanging low in the sky, the deep blue of midnight tinged slightly with purples and pinks near the horizon—the new day was well on its way to dawning.

“Good morning, then, Fareeha,” Angela said, a slight smile on her lips as she took her leave of the pilot.


End file.
